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Does Climate Change Transfer Poverty from Rural to Urban Areas? Implications for Regional Sub-Saharan Research Agenda
Get PDFThere is growing recognition that climate change is a worldwide phenomenon with far-reaching effects and that it is linked to an increase in the frequency of extreme weather occurrences. In rural areas of most of the sub-Saharan countries and other developing countries in the world, the frequent occurrences of extreme weather events such as flooding, heat waves, and drought have significantly destroyed livelihood activities of poor communities. Unfavorable geographic characteristics, a lack of resources, and a higher reliance on climate-sensitive sources of income among many community members in poor nations all contribute to the impact. These include livelihood activities associated with land use and agricultural practices. Sadly, the population’s capacity and incentive to stay in rural areas have been altered because of climate change and its detrimental impacts on agricultural output, income, and subsistence living; as a result, many rural dwellers are migrating to urban areas. Rural populations migrate to urban areas in search of economic opportunities to earn a living. It is evident that the expected opportunities in urban areas are not always available; thus, most of the rural migrants are stuck in informal settlements, shanty towns, and slums without access to services. Consequently, it is evident that climate change is somehow transferring poverty from rural to urban areas. This study adopted the push/pull theory as a theoretical framework to guide the discussion and analysis. Based on an extensive review of the existing literature using qualitative document analysis, the purpose of this article is to examine the role of climate change on rural–urban migration, which ultimately contributes to the increase in urban poverty. The article concludes by reviewing the current (limited) research on climate change and poverty and argues for a research agenda in the context of sub-Saharan Africa toward sustainable ways to respond to the challenges of climate-induced migration, urbanization, and poverty
Making sense of the labour movement as we confront the burden of the future
No full textProfessor MONIQUE MARKS presents a unique take on the new challenges and opportunities facing the labour movement in South Africa today. In a speech she gave at the 1973 Durban Strikes 50th Remembrance last year to celebrate the significance and the gains of the ‘Durban Moment,’1 she emphasised the need to provide hope and a sense of belonging to those currently relegated to the margins of society
40s years of shop floor resistance in a rubber factory
No full textThe paper reflects on 40 years (1970s to 2010s) of research on shop floor orders, resistance, and cultural formations of workers in a Durban rubber factory. The paper pieces together research on workplace in everyday life, identity, and resistance from case studies in the 1980s to the second decade of the 2000s. By revisiting theories of workplace resistance, workplace regimes and cultural formations, the paper argues that there are continuities and discontinuities in researching workplace and workers\u27 lives throughout this 30 years continuum. Some continuities the paper explores include the persisting migrant labour and migrant identity, shop floor resistance, trade union militancy, masculinities, and trade union accountability. The paper will also show that there are discontinuities in experiences, as well as in theorising the workplace between then and now. The most significant discontinuity is the end of apartheid and its legislative and statutory measures and how they governed both the workplace and society. Webster and Von Hold (2005) call it the triple transition of economic, political, and social dimensions. For instance, the scrapping of the influx control measures and the establishment of the Labour Relations Act of 1995 constitute a significant disjuncture from the past. The paper also presents an extended approach to cultural formations approach, which critiques a bounded conception of cultural formations to beyond workplace in the 1980s literatures. The paper argues that an extended and relational approach looks at how shop floor culture is produced and reproduced in everyday life through invoking what is regarded in literature as ‘beyond workplace’ cultural formations. Migrant identities and practises have become part of what Sitas (1996) which workers invoke mostly when mobilising shop floor resistance. Similarly, ubudoda (masculinities) play out in everyday on shop floor in the ‘manufacturing of consent’ (Burawoy, 1979) and shop floor order
South Africa: Still a Country of Two Nations
No full textThirty years into the democratic dispensation, South Africa is still a country of two nations as former President Thabo Mbeki once famously described it. The dream of economic freedom post-Apartheid is deferred indefinitely. The challenge of poverty remains, to borrow the famous words of the eminent African American scholar William Edward Burghardt Du Bois “the problem of the color-line”. The rural countryside also looks and feels cast adrift. It is dominated by pervasive Apartheid geography with a preponderance of informal settlements. Municipalities are struggling under the yoke of corruption and poor service delivery and because municipalities are struggling, hospitals, public transport, schools, and security are struggling. A key priority of the national question, i.e. the long-promised land reform and a demand of the 1955 Congress of the People is yet to be delivered. In the face of this anger, the ANC is confronted with one tough question: reform or die slowly. This essay delves into the ANC-led attempts at creating a South Africa that works for all. It critically examines why the Freedom Charter’s resolution - “the People Shall Share in the Country\u27s Wealth” - is still an aspiration three decades into Black majority rule. Finally, it posits that that many fundamental aspects of the national question, especially land and the economy, have been postponed for too long and that in order to get the rainbow nation project back on track, these issues must be attacked frontally and with a sense of renewed urgency
Corporate corruption of South African politics and economics: ‘Accumulation by dispossession’ as a structural process, beyond ‘state capture’
Get PDF Author details: Patrick Bond is Distinguished Professor at the University of Johannesburg, Department of Sociology, where he is Director of the Centre for Social Change. From 2020-21 he was Professor at the Western Cape School of Government and from 2015-2019 was a Distinguished Professor of Political Economy at the University of the Witwatersrand School of Governance. From 2004 through mid-2016, he was Senior Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal School of Built Environment and Development Studies and was also Director of the Centre for Civil Society. He lectured from 1997-2004 at the Wits School of Governance. He has held visiting posts at a dozen universities and presented lectures at more than 100 others
Dear Comrade President: Oliver Tambo and the foundations of South Africa\u27s constitution
No full textAt 372 pages of main text, and about 70 further pages of appendices, notes and index, this book is densely packed with information. It is also packed with characters, events and developments that are relatively well known together with others that will be new to many readers. The book bears the stamp of its dedicated author, but the stamp of Albie Sachs, credited on the cover and in the text for “editorial contributions”, is also evident. Indeed, Albie makes regular appearances in the story-line, which spans several continents and decades, from beginning to end. It is for this very reason that Odendaal decided he should not be a co-author
Corruption v democracy - part two: Democratic institutions fight back
No full textIn part two, DAVID LEWIS returns to the question of the relationship between democracy and corruption and argues that for political corruption on the scale he describes in part one to thrive with impunity, democracy would have to be hollowed out
Rethinking comparative politics in the context of debates about decolonising higher education
Get PDFIn recent years, interest in the topic of the decolonisation of higher education curricula has intensified. A key aspect of attempts to decolonise higher education is the decolonisation of university curricula. This paper explores the question of curricular decolonisation in relation to comparative politics. The paper begins with an overview of debates on curricular decolonisation, proceeding to a discussion of the specific challenges that arise when trying to decolonise comparative politics. I then discuss some changes introduced to a first-year comparative politics course I teach to South African students, detailing my attempts to change the course in the light of debates on decolonising the curriculum. The paper concludes with reflections on some of the shortcomings of the intervention discussed, especially in terms of the persistence of Eurocentric orientations among some of my students and the difficulty in fostering sustained interactive learning
Foregrounding relational dimensions of curriculum and learning design in online and hybrid learning environments
Get PDFThis paper reflects on a collaborative intervention implemented by an Education lecturer and Writing Centre staff at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) before and during the COVID-19 lockdown. The migration to emergency remote teaching was destabilising and exposed and exacerbated existing student inequalities. This collaborative intervention involved formative feedback being provided by writing tutors to students in Honours modules as part of a strategy of embedding academic literacies development within the modules. We used a Design Based Research (DBR) approach combined with collaborative action research. Key elements of a response-able pedagogy (Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017) and Tronto’s political ethics of care (Tronto, 1993, 2013) were drawn on to explore our curriculum design principles. We argue that online and hybrid curriculum design needs to consider affective dimensions of learning such as trust and care. Building webs of support into curriculum and assessment design constitutes a necessary element of a just pedagogy
A timely question: How can we not talk about becoming a professor in the context of a neoliberal and decolonising higher education?
Get PDFDrawing from my own experiences and critical reflections on my journey to becoming a professor, I show how two types of pressures facing higher education institutions necessitate a revisiting of the role of a professor. These pressures are, firstly, to account for “market-friendliness” and, secondly, to respond to the transformation and decolonisation imperatives as a result of massification. I show the broader socio-economic and political conditions under which universities exist and the impact these have on the knowledge project. I argue that such impact manifests through instrumental reasoning and the commodification of knowledge, as well as “Western hegemony” over others. I then explore the extent to which a professorial role may need to re-adapt in order to respond to these broader socio-economic and political exigencies that continue to spill over into higher education